Valentine's Day 1979: Urging Careful Love And Tender Loving Care

Some Harvard students celebrated Valentine's Day yesterday with champagne and caviar while other resisted any sentimental displays during Cupid's annual festival.

"I bought two dozen red carnations for six women. I don't know how I'm going to get them all delivered in one night," one Harvard student who wished to remain unidentified, said yesterday.

"People don't seem to be very sentimental about Valentine's Day around here. We talked about it in English today and everyone seems to feel it's a creation of Hallmark cards," Jenny Cornuelle '81 said yesterday.

Dunster House began selling carnations last Thursday to raise money for the house council, Lloyd Benn '80, a member of the council said last night. "We sold about 150 carnations in all, and then delivered them to the doors of Dunster residents with notes from the senders. People didn't buy as much as we had expected--we lost a little money," he said.

Harvard Square merchants did some lively Valentine's Day business, despite what some students saw as apathy.

James B. Vaughan, manager of Bailey's in the Square, estimated yesterday that his shop sold 7400 pounds of heart-shaped candies. "Today is our biggest single day of the year," he said.

The Harvard Coop sold $33,000 worth of greeting cards in the past three weeks, Summer N. Goldstein, a buyer for the store, said yesterday. "We've run out of candy, we've sold 90 per cent of our cards, and we've done 53 per cent more business than last year. In the early seventies people saw Valentines as foolish. Now they're starting to get more sentimental," he said.

Joy Pomeroy, of Belgian Fudge, estimated last night that the store sold 65 pounds of fudge in one day.

Two Harvard florists said they were too busy to count how many flowers they had sold, but said that most were not to students.

A third florist said she had sold more than 25,000 stems of flowers.

The biggest selling alcoholic beverages yesterday were champagne and white wine, a liquor salesman at Sage's Market said yesterday. "American girls can't handle red wine, even if it is Valentine's Day," he said.